Unfettered Display of Geospatial Data Pose National Security

It is essential to come up with legislation for dissemination of images and geospatial data in public domain before according permission to service providers such as Google as “unfettered display of data” could have serious national security implications, the government said today.

In a written response to a question in Rajya Sabha, Y S Chowdary, Minister of State, Science and Technology and Earth Science, said such legislation is equally important to avoid privacy violations of citizens.

“It is essential that India should have legislation to cover all aspects of such dissemination of images and geospatial data in public domain through websites by internet service providers such as Google.

“Any unfettered freedom with regard to display of geospatail data could have serious national and public safety implications,” Chowdary said.

Incidentally, Google CEO Sundar Pichai is in India.

It is to be noted that the government had registered a case against search giant Google for collecting classified data.

It had alleged that M/s Google India Ltd, without any approval of Ministry of Defence or any other agency of Government, conducted the Mapathon 2013 competition during February 12, 2013 to March 25, 2013 and collected data, including classified data, in violation of the National Map Policy-2005.

“An official complaint (FIR) has been lodged by Survey of India with the Delhi Police in February, 2013. Presently Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is investigating the case,” then Union Minister Jitendra Singh had told Lok Sabha last year.